Have you ever admired, and wished you could be more like those with a never-wavering “blessed assurance”? While I’m mostly thankful for my philosophical critical thinking bent, sometimes I wish…

In Lord Jim, Joseph Conrad describes a kind of courage exemplified in the main character. An ambivalent description, to be sure (emphasis added):

“I don’t mean military courage, or civil courage, or any special kind of courage. I mean just that inborn ability to look temptation straight in the face–a readiness unintellectual enough, goodness knows, but without pose–a power of resistance, don’t you see, ungracious if you like, but priceless–an unthinking and blessed stiffness before the outward and inward terrors, before the might of nature, and the seductive corruption of men–backed by a faith invulnerable to the strength of facts, to the contagion of example, to the solicitation of ideas. Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back-door of our mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to live decently and would like to die easy!”